You might be a little different if...

I came in the house yesterday and it smelled great, like something cooking. I take great pride in being able to figure out what’s for dinner with just a sniff as I walk in the door. It smelled kinda’ like nutmeg, maybe a touch of ginger, maybe some mint. I sniffed again, and I didn’t smell any cinnamon, but it did smell a little peppery.

My family has a recipe for mince meat pie that is well received in the fall of the year when the weather turns cool. We make it with real spiced meat, usually venison neck meat, stewed until fall-apart-tender, then diced real small. It is then mixed together with apples and various spices. Then all baked up in a top-and-bottom pie crust. The pie is a real treat for me. But it didn’t smell quite right for mince-meat pie.

What ever the odor was, it smelled like it would be delicious with meat. Not seeing my wife anywhere, I went into the kitchen, and lifted the lid on a large kettle of delightfully bubbling pepperwood nuts, outer skin and all. Of course that required me to find my wife and ask “what the hell….” She informed me that she was going to try it as a dye for her wool that she spins, and that we were going to have left-over spaghetti for dinner. Sometimes life is just not fair.

My wife’s brother was visiting from Pennsylvania. My wife was busy making pepperwood nut dye, and I was busy cleaning and grinding Black Oak acorns for mush. He’s a country lawyer, and likes the country life himself, but somehow I think that maybe our life-style might have been overkill for him. He feigned polite interest in our projects, with his suave country lawyer way, but I know that it will be a great source of humor for him to tell the story when he arrives back home.

Later that day, I went into Southern Humboldt Builders Supply to buy a snow shovel to scoop the Pepperwood nuts off the driveway and into a wheelbarrow. While I was there, I noticed a gentleman picking out a hand saw. He would pick each one up and take it out of its cover and feel, tap on it a little bit and put it back. I saw that he had tried a nail saw, a crosscut and, and a rip saw. Thinking he must be confused, I asked him what kind of a saw he was looking for. He replied that he was looking for a saw that could “sing good”. It seems that he had a gig for that night and didn’t have his singing saw with him. He then played a few bars of the Tennessee waltz on a saw for me.

It occurred to me that we might be a little different here in Garberville.